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by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador is “seriously threatened” by drug trafficking mafias who want to “take control of all the country’s prisons,” President Guillermo Lasso said Monday, after the heads of the armed forces and the prison service quit following jail riots that left 68 people dead. Lasso said a “massive operation” was underway by the police and the army in the overcrowded prison in Guayaquil, where two days of fighting […]
by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — The death toll from bloody clashes between rival gangs in an Ecuador prison has surpassed 100, with 52 more wounded, the government prison authority said Wednesday, as soldiers surrounded the facility — one of the country’s many overburdened and understaffed jails. Inmates went to war armed with guns and grenades on Tuesday at the Guayaquil prison complex: a clash between prisoners believed to be linked to Mexican […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — At least 24 prisoners were killed and another 42 wounded in a fight between armed inmates in an Ecuador prison in Guayaquil, police said Tuesday. The regional police commander, General Fausto Buenano, confirmed the toll via the official Twitter account of the government of Guayas province. When police entered prison wing number five, where most of the violence was reported, they found the bodies of prisoners shot to death or killed […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — A fire tore through an Indonesian prison on Java island on Wednesday, killing 41 people and injuring dozens of others, an official said. The blaze at the Tangerang Penitentiary, just outside the capital Jakarta, broke out in the early hours when most inmates were asleep. Rescue teams were able to put out the fire, which was mostly contained in one block that housed prisoners jailed over drug charges, at around 3:00 […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — A mouse plague ravaging Australia’s farmlands forced the evacuation of hundreds of inmates from a rural jail on Tuesday, as the rodents broke in and chewed through essential infrastructure. Scores of mice have gnawed through ceiling panels and wiring at a New South Wales prison, prompting authorities to scale back operations for repairs. “The health, safety and wellbeing of staff and inmates is our number one priority, so it’s important for […]
MEDAN, Indonesia (AFP) — Four people have been arrested in Indonesia for allegedly stealing Covid-19 vaccines marked for prisoners and selling them to the public, authorities said Tuesday. The suspects took more than 1,000 doses made by China’s Sinovac from the prisoners’ quota, offering them to buyers in the capital Jakarta and in North Sumatra’s Medan city for around 250,000 rupiah ($17) each. The four arrested included a doctor at a prison in Medan and […]
BANGKOK, Thailand (AFP) — Thailand reported a new daily high of nearly 10,000 coronavirus cases on Monday, more than two-thirds of them in prisons, as the kingdom battles its third wave of the pandemic. The kingdom’s Covid-19 task force reported 9,635 new cases, 6,853 of which were among prisoners. Nearly half of 24,000 inmates tested at eight prisons, mainly in Bangkok and its suburbs, including several where prominent democracy activists have been detained, were found […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Five prison guards held after a new riot broke out in an Ecuadorian prison were released Monday after the unrest was controlled without fatalities, a week after 79 inmates died in bloody gang warfare, the police said. “The servants of the security corps, who were held by the inmates, are safe and without damage to their physical integrity or health,” the prison authority said in a statement. “No deaths were recorded” […]
LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — The number of COVID-19 cases has exploded in one of California’s oldest prisons, San Quentin, as more than 1,000 inmates have tested positive for the virus, authorities in the US state announced Tuesday. “That is our deep area of focus and concern right now,” said Governor Gavin Newsom, noting that 42 percent of the some 3,500 inmates at San Quentin, near San Francisco, are considered “medically vulnerable.” Unlike other […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peru has freed 1,500 inmates over the past two months to ease overcrowding in prisons that have seen riots and deaths from the coronavirus. The announcement of the freeing of people serving time for minor offenses was made in a weekend statement by Justice Minister Fernando Castaneda. On April 14, the government pledged to free 3,000 prisoners to ease overcrowding. Peru has the second-most coronavirus cases in Latin America after Brazil, […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US prisons have reported 30,000 cases of coronavirus among inmates and guards, a US university research group reported Wednesday, as a government study said prison guards could be instrumental in the spread of the disease. Data compiled from official sources by the COVID-19 Behind Bars Project of the UCLA law school showed that out of more than two million people incarcerated nationwide, there were 21,007 confirmed coronavirus cases, and 295 […]
(Eagle News)–Nine Quezon City Jail detainees have tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019. According to Bureau of Jail Management and Penology spokesperson Major Insp. Xavier Solda, nine BJMP personnel assigned in the same jail also tested positive for COVID-19. He said so far, authorities were conducting their contact tracing. Solda’s announcement came days after 22 detainees asked the Supreme Court to allow them to be temporarily free on bail or on recognizance, citing their […]
